- Weigh the votes don’t count them! - 14th November 2025
- Law unto themselves… - 13th November 2025
- Rearview mirror - 12th November 2025
During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, was always suspicious of politicians who claimed huge popular support with massive election victories, and this is now underlined by recent polls where they said that they had ‘won’ massive majorities.
There are a number of iron rules in journalism, but this is one of them – if an election win is enormous, it is probably fraudulent.
Two examples have come only in the last few weeks.
Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara ‘won’ a fourth term at the age of 83, on 89.77 percent of votes!
Yet this was in an election where his two greatest rivals were barred from running, and one in which the electoral commission has major concerns about the way it was conducted.
Both former president Laurent Gbagbo and Credit Suisse ex-CEO Tidjane Thiam, were prevented from standing, Mr Gbagbo for a criminal conviction, and Mr Thiam for having acquired French nationality.
“Their absence, their calls not to participate in the election, and the climate of tension that deteriorated in recent days foretold a significant demobilisation of the electorate”, declared William Assanvo, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
Entrepreneur Jean-Louis Billon came second but he only got 3.09 per cent.
Ahoua Don Mello and the centrist Henriette Lagou did even worse supposedly, with respectively 1.97 per cent and 1.15 per cent of the votes.
Let’s look at the other recent one, in Tanzania because, if anything, that’s even WORSE!
Samia Suluhu Hassan ‘won’ the presidency on October 29 with an incredible 98 per cent of the vote!
However it appears that even this massive ‘victory’ didn’t satisfy her, and she has seemed unconfident, with her governing party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) rattled by the biggest protests Tanzania has EVER seen.
Her inauguration was brought forward and moved from a stadium in the largest city, Dar es Salaam, to a military parade ground in Dodoma, the sleepy capital.
The public was banned, and only four other African leaders turned up.
The CCM has proscribed opposition parties, jailed their leaders and seemingly fiddled the results, hence the protests.
But rather than make concessions, the CCM has unleashed terror on an unprecedented scale.
Estimates vary, but some critics believe THOUSANDS may have died…
Even before the result, huge worries were raised by Human Rights organisations, with one proclaiming: ‘Amnesty International, in a report published on October 19, said an “unopposed, unchecked, unjust ‘wave of terror’ sweeps” through the country ahead of the election’.
To put all of this in context, elections closer to home have been rather different.
Let’s look at the last General Election (GE) in July 2024.
Labour won with just 33.7 per cent, and in Wales, Welsh Labour gained 37 per cent.
This was a transparent, democratic election, although the First Past the Post (FPP) system that is used is highly questionable.
Gaining a huge 174 seat majority on such a small share of the vote is one end of the scale, but at the other end it is even more ridiculous to ‘win’ with 98 per cent!
Details of Phil’s, astonishing decades-long journalistic career (when interviews with image-conscious politicians would often dominate, but they hadn’t secured the kind of majorities we’ve seen in recent weeks), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.
